if we all ceased to believe in fair dealing, the deceiver's occupation would be gone. As Mr. Lecky says, in industrial societies "veracity becomes the first virtue in the moral type, and no character is regarded with any kind of approbation in which it is wanting. It is more than any other the test distinguishing a good man from a bad man. . . . This constitutes probably the chief moral superiority of nations pervaded by a strong industrial spirit over nations like the Italians, the Spaniards, or the Irish, among whom that spirit is wanting. The usual characteristic of the latter nations is a certain laxity or instability of character, a proneness to exaggeration, a want of truthfulness in little things, an infidelity to engagements, from which an Englishman, educated in the habits of industrial life, readily infers a complete absence of moral principle" We may even go with him when he adds, "The promotion of industrial veracity is probably the single form in which the growth of manufactures exercises a favorable influence upon morals"
It is important to note the almost entire absence of this kind of veracity among the Greeks, because this fact shows us that truthfulness is not necessarily the result of a high state of civilization, but only of a state of civilization accompanied by such life conditions as tend to make truthfulness a habit. And if we inquire what such conditions are, we shall probably find that they depend, more than upon any other single cause, upon the gradual subsidence of the regime of mutual antagonism, and the rise of the régime of mutual help.[1] So far as industrialism has abated the struggle for existence among individuals and nations, it has promoted veracity; while to the extent to which it only keeps this struggle alive under changed forms, it merely perpetuates the untruthfulness which was from the first a concomitant of such struggle.
2. Political Veracity.—By this, still following Mr. Lecky, we mean the spirit of impartiality which, in matters of controversy, desires that all facts, arguments, opinions, should be freely and fully stated—in a word, the spirit of fair play. We call it "political" because it is undoubtedly to be interpreted as a growth, immediately, out of developing freedom in political life. Democratic progress, then, provided it be democratic in reality as well as in name, will favor the spread of this particular form of truthfulness; coercive rule (whether it come through the tyranny of the one or of the many) will always prove hostile to it. It suffices here to observe these connections, without undertaking any analysis of the relations subsisting between forms of government and social activities. A free platform
- ↑ For evidence on this point, see Spencer's Principles of Ethics, Part II, chapter ix, Mr. Spencer, of course, connects the growth of veracity, directly or indirectly, with the decline of militancy and the spread of peaceful activities.
